Garden of Thoughts and Dreams
by Scribbler
Summary: Aerith tries to teach Sora about gardening, lessons that have a deeper meaning than either of them realise. Plus Yuffie has made a discovery about Merlin that has even Leon raising an eyebrow. What's all this about a... girdle? Less cracky than it sounds.


**Disclaimer: **In no way, shape or form are these characters mine.

**A/N: **This was actually my very first attempt at writing Kingdom Hearts fic; it just took longer to write than my second or third attempts and so it being posted after them. There are things in here that I might play with later.

Reviews appreciated and reviewers adored, possibly even worshipped a little.

_**

* * *

**_

Garden of Thoughts and Dreams

© Scribbler, March 2008.

_

* * *

_

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.

**Abram L. Urban**

* * *

All things considered, her garden was turning out quite nice. The bags of ancient compost smelled a little musty, but the 'Plant Pick-Me-Up' Merlin provided when he saw her dirty hands seemed to be doing the trick. The nutrients that flooded into it when she added a few drops of the pink liquid were almost tangible, making her skin prickle.

Clods of rich brown soil turned over when Aerith sank her hands into the freshly filled tray, working them between her fingers to aerate the top soil and create channels for water to flow. Things got dry so easily around Hollow Bastion. It seemed like she was forever breaking a crust on what had been moist soil five minutes ago, but had turned hard and ribbed like the wilderness beyond the mountain range while her back was turned.

Sweat trickled down her face and she sat back on her heels, dragging a wrist across her forehead to survey her work. Rows of neatly prepared trays awaited the seedlings she was transferring from their smaller pots. The pots themselves sat in her other side, creating an interesting tableau against their backdrop. Her concession for the water jug was a huge saucer, which might once have been used to feed guard dogs or whatever else had been used to defend this collection of granite memories.

She wished Merlin's potion worked on more than trays and pots. At the beginning, as an experiment, she tried it on a patch of earth in a remote corner of the bailey, but it had sunk without trace and nothing good ever came of it except an interesting shade of mould. At least when it was confined to a pot she could be sure her seedlings wouldn't die like the rest of the vegetation around here. The lack of greenery scraped along her skin, seemed even more unnatural than the shape of the castle, or the oily squirm of Dusks over its battlements.

She heard someone approach before she saw them and didn't bother to look up. If they'd got this far into the building they had to be a friend.

"Uh, hi." Sora sounded relieved, frustrated and puzzled all at once.

Aerith twisted to face him. "Hello, Sora." She smiled cheerfully. Working with her plants always put her in a good mood, even when evil was breathing down their necks and danger rat-a-tat-tatting at their door. "It's good to see you. Are Donald and Goofy with you?"

"Uh, they just went to … see about …" Sora was staring at her trays. "Are those meant to be in here?"

Aerith followed his gaze. "Of course. It'd be difficult to misplace seventeen of them. The seedlings' roots are getting crushed in such small pots, and they're hardy enough to survive being transferred to proper trays now. Then they can spread out a bit more. Plants need room to breathe just like people."

She tried not to think about what happened when _too much_ room was the issue: like when a few strong but wounded souls scattered through a huge complex like Hollow Bastion was worse than three injured not-quite-strangers stuffed, weaponless, into a rock crevice to escape a pack of Heartless. Yuffie still liked to make Leon blush by reminding him of that incident.

Sora still looked puzzled. "But … the computer room?"

Aerith shrugged. "Why not? It's cool enough in here with all the fans to prevent the machines from overheating, and I don't have to worry about Heartless attacking this far inside. I can really concentrate on what I'm doing. Are you looking for Leon?" Why else would the Keyblade Master come to this room uninvited?

Sora blinked at the sudden change of subject. He looked cute and so much more his age like that. Aerith understood the necessity of having a champion to fight the darkness, but she was painfully aware of what too much too young could do to a person. "Actually, yeah. Do you know where he is?"

"Probably patrolling or cleaning his gunblade. He doesn't really grasp the catharsis of gardening – though he might be a bit more appreciative if I ever get some real vegetables to grow." She shook her head. "Trading for food in town is easy. Finding food that doesn't taste like cardboard is more difficult. Even Merlin complains that boiling his own socks would make better tea than the teabags around here." She shrugged. "Personally I wouldn't want to be a test subject for _that_ experiment

Sora was still blinking. She'd lost him early on. "'Catharsis'?"

Aerith laughed. "It's like … Tifa once said it's like an emotional burp. Getting things into the open where you can work through them at your own pace." For Tifa that was easy – for whatever she took her feelings out on, not so much.

Sora still looked lost. It was refreshing to have someone so innocent around – despite that Sora had probably seen terrible things on his travels, had battled Heartless knowing his life was on the line and watched those he cared about slip away from him like smoke, he wasn't yet at the point where all he could do was narrow his eyes at the world for whatever trick it was trying to pull next. His compassion was impulsive and more than a little reckless, spiced with the indiscretion of someone who genuinely believed the world was as honest and open as himself – or _should be_. It shocked Sora when people didn't live up to his expectations of them, even when he'd known them for all of thirty seconds. Something about him invited confidences and care. You _cared_ about what happened to him. He was the last of a dying breed: someone who saw the best in people and drew it out of them just by being himself. The memory of meeting him could even coax a smile from _Cloud_ – a small, sickly thing, like a vine of ivy with half is leaves dropping off, but a smile all the same. Not many things made Cloud smile anymore.

For a moment Sora's face changed even as she looked at it, becoming leaner, older, and framed by a shock of black hair. Then he spoke and the image dispelled.

"Oh," he said thoughtfully. "On the islands we used to go swimming. Or mess around in the waterfall. Riku and I, we'd both stand under the 'fall even though it hurt like heck. It was like a contest to see who could last longest before the pressure got too much." A half-smile played about his mouth at the memory. "Kairi never played, though. She said we were idiots."

"That doesn't sound very cathartic," Aerith commented. "Still, each to their own. I have my gardening, Yuffie has her _kata_ and Leon has his blade, a soft cloth and a tin of polish. None of us would be happy trying to relax using another's method." Nobody knew how (whether) Cloud relaxed. Nobody could ask, either, because he just turned those empty blue eyes on them and stared until they stopped.

Aerith glanced between her trays and Sora. He looked tired, though that tenacious brightness still burned in his eyes. He'd lost some more puppy fat, highlighting high cheekbones and a mouth always a hairsbreadth from a smile. Even though his skin was free of even a single zit to signal teenage acne (maybe fighting Heartless was god for your pores), Aerith imagined a criss-cross scar on his smooth cheek.

"Is it urgent that you find Leon? Did you want to tell him something important?"

"What? Uh, no. not really. Just checking in, y'know? And maybe … scrounging something to eat?" Sora rubbed self-consciously at the back of his neck. "Didn't much fancy sharing what Simba and Nala were having."

Aerith laughed again. It felt good. There weren't many opportunities to laugh anymore. "If you'll help me finish here I'll see what I can rustle up."

"Really? Oh boy!" Sora immediately reached for a tray but pulled his hands back again. "Uh, I'm not so great with plants. What do you want me to do?"

"Here. Take this." Aerith handed him the planting bar she'd been using; an arrow-shaped tool made of smooth black plastic. She'd found it alongside the compost, though what either were doing in Hollow Bastion she couldn't fathom. Yuffie used them as kunai and practised flinging them at priceless ornaments until Aerith told her what they were for.

There were so many mysteries about this place. Some days it felt like the weight of what had come before would smother everyone inside like poisonous gas. They'd be found in their beds, or sprawled across the battlements, eyes wide and pieces of cloying secrets lodged in their throats.

Sora looked at the planting bar. "This thing looks dangerous." This from the kid who wielded a giant razor-edged key.

"I suppose it does," Aerith admitted, taking up another. "You use it like this." She demonstrated, thrusting the point into one of the trays and wiggling it about to make a tapered furrow. "You have to be careful not to damage these," she went on, lifting a seedling from its pot, dipping it in the jug of water and placing it gently into the furrow. "The roots are very delicate. See how fine they are? If you damage them even a little you could kill the whole plant. They need to be kept hydrated and cushioned as much as possible. Remember, these are seedlings – _baby_ plants – and they need just as much care and attention as baby people and animals." She dug the planting bar into the soil about three inches from the seedling, wiggling it about again.

"Is that for another one to go in?" Sora asked, but she shook her head.

"No, it's to make sure the first one's properly embedded right down to the roots. It forces soil into the empty spaces ever so gently. If you leave any air pockets you'll have problems later, but you can never be too careful with seedlings." She made a fresh furrow and planted another with quick, easy movements. "It sounds a lot to remember, but see how straightforward it is when you've got a rhythm going? The trick is to avoid tangling the roots and have them all pointing downwards. After a few tries you learn how not to plant them too deep or too shallow. See?" She demonstrated again.

Sora was watching her hands intently. "You make it look real easy."

"It is easy, as long as you're careful and respect that plants are living things as much as we are."

"You must have had a lot of practise at this."

"I suppose." Her first love, the garden in her church, was lost forever but lived in her memories as vibrantly as it ever had in real life. Flowers burst open like squibs, in and out of season, splashing colour into every corner of her mind: hyacinths, poppies, poinsettia, honeysuckle, Larkspur, Sweet Pea, primroses, floribunda, plus a thousand other things she'd wanted to grow but never had time to try. When the darkness consumed their world it didn't just take what had been, it took everything that could ever be; all the possibilities and choices they had never made, all the people they'd met plus those they hadn't, and somehow that hurt even more. Everything prospered in the rich soil of Aerith's memory, as if to make up for missing out in reality. "Gardening makes me feel … safe," she admitted.

"Maybe I shouldn't ..." Sheepishly, Sora gestured at the trays. "The last time I tried gardening it was a punishment for breaking the mayor's fence. I was supposed to weed his flowerbed, only nobody ever told me how to tell the difference between weeds and flowers before they've bloomed, so I thought everything was a weed and … well …"

Aerith laughed, a proper laugh that started beneath her ribcage and bubbled upwards like a shaken bottle of fizzy drink, as she imagined Sora being chased down the street by the mayor's wife clutching handfuls of uprooted Pink Mandevilla. When he got to the part about hiding on the beach, falling into a rock pool and being discovered when a crab latching onto his nose made him yelp, her chest and windpipe were starting to hurt.

It was only afterwards, tears in her eyes and faced with Sora's embarrassed grin, that she realised she couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed like that. Not just a snigger behind her hand, or the polite chime allowed in company, but a cut-loose, no-holds-barred, my-sides-are-starting-to-hurt hooting. Perhaps before the darkness ate their world – hers and Cloud's and Yuffie's and Cid's. And Tifa's, she reminded herself.

Having Tifa around was fresh and new, like opening a window in one of the castle's stuffy old rooms. It gave Aerith hope that perhaps others had survived that final, devastating conflict before their world submerged and didn't come up for air again. Before the Heartless invaded and polluted everything they'd ever known, casting them into the ether until they washed up in Traverse Town – or not even there for Cloud, Cid and Tifa. Cid landed in a lush backwater with plenty of wood but no concept of modern technology. It took him eleven months to track them down with the resources available, and even longer to track _Cloud_ down. If it hadn't been for Sora, Donald and Goofy they might still be searching for him, and without Cloud to draw her, Tifa might still be wandering in the wilderness. Yet they had come together despite things being stacked against them. They were good at that – beating the odds.

Aerith ached for there to be more than just this handful of survivors. She ached for calloused hands, mako-eyes and an easy smile that might, somehow, also ease Cloud's troubled heart.

"All right then," she said, laying down her tools and standing up. Her dress was filthy and no amount of brushing made a difference, so she clapped her hands in pretence of knocking the dirt off and brushed past Sora. "I'll come back to this after we've eaten. Probably Leon and Yuffie will appear as soon as they smell food, then you can debrief or consult or whatever it is you and Leon talk about." That was the way it used to work in Traverse Town, when it was just the three of them learning how to live (together): they'd go out and leave her alone, but as soon as she started preparing food they'd loom over her shoulders telling her not to add too much salt.

It was mostly Leon whom Sora talked to when he checked in. It seemed to Aerith that in the absence of Riku, Sora was adopting Leon as an older brother figure. She approved of this. Being around Sora had loosened Leon considerably. He was still a tight coil of melancholy most of the time, but he had moments where he seemed more human and less like a man-shaped container of wordless suffering and painful memories of those he couldn't save. In Traverse Town, at the very beginning when they were still breathless with survivor's guilt and tentatively getting to know each other, he lived as though he were a clenched fist looking for a jaw to punch. With every survivor from her world that they found, it was like a reminder for him of all those who _hadn't_ appeared from his world. His frown still reminded her of knuckles, but at least he could unclench sometimes.

Or maybe it was just that he now seemed more human compared to Cloud, whose pervasive sadness wound its way down corridors, infused drapes, curled around table legs and oozed between the cracks of Hollow Bastion's stones. Cloud was corrosive and heartbreaking and fervent, and even learning that Sephiroth hadn't killed Tifa like he thought was not enough to stop his vendetta.

When Cloud looked at her, Aerith could see supreme sadness there. Those rare occasions when he opened his mouth, he never said what he'd been planning to say. Cloud couldn't talk to her. She'd tried starting conversations, but he shied away, found excuses to leave the room or just walked out without a word. Sometimes she saw a scarred face and black hair reflected in his eyes, the bandages wrapped around his sword stood out more than before, and she wondered what Sephiroth had done (made him do?) that kept Cloud chasing him. Even though he'd stayed at Hollow Bastion, Cloud looked out of windows, patrolled their furthest borders and spent whole nights on the roof, watching the sky for a silver-haired man with a single wing. Those times Aerith wanted nothing more than to hold Cloud close and make promises she couldn't keep about how everything would be okay. Yuffie would laugh if she knew, but Aerith had seen the way she also looked at Cloud; with an expression as close as Yuffie ever came to anxious. Cloud was ticking, his fuse dulled to a red glow but still lit, and nobody knew how much powder he held inside him.

The kitchen was empty. Their footsteps echoed like slaps as Aerith went from cupboard to cupboard and directed an eager Sora to help. Soon a pot with a blackened undercarriage dangled over the open fireplace, but it remained cold while they searched for matches.

"Donald could use magic to start a fire," Sora suggested, before shaking his head. "Actually, no. He'd probably fireball the chimney and collapse the ceiling on us. He's a good mage, and knows all sorts of cool spells, so don't get me wrong but, uh … the lisp …" He waggled a hand in a gesture only he could understand, his expression somewhere between defensive and apologetic. "It sometimes makes things difficult."

Aerith chuckled. Really, she was laughing more today than she normally did in a week, even with Yuffie around trying to bait Merlin and the three fairy godmothers. Just last week the young ninja had come home from grocery shopping, lurid pink from top to toe and grinning like the Cheshire Cat that had invaded the old wizard's home and started living with him.

"It was worth it," was all she had to say, before skipping off to break into Leon's bathroom because he had a sunken bath you could swim lengths in. Not even Aerith could get more than that from her, and Merlin remained tight-lipped on the matter.

"We could just make sandwiches?" Sora suggested, finding a loaf.

"That bread's good for nothing but toasting, which also requires a fire."

His stomach rumbled loudly. "Uh, excuse me."

"A-ha!" Aerith held up a single match that had been languishing beside a carving knife and a meat tenderiser. Even the kitchen utensils seemed extra dangerous, as though just waiting for someone to give an order laced with magical green fire so they could leap up and run amok. Aerith quickly shut the drawer on them.

"Is there a box to light it with?"

She deflated, just a little. "I'm sure we can …" She glanced around. Cid would use his own stubble but Sora barely had baby fluff on his chin. "We'll improvise."

Sora's stomach rumbled again. "I don't mind my sandwich being a little stale."

Aerith sighed. She leaned backwards against the larder door, studying him. "So where _are_ Donald and Goofy? You never got around to telling me."

"Oh, they went to Merlin's. Something about magical elixirs and stuff I wouldn't understand. No big deal. I wanted to speak to Leon anyway." He waved a hand to cover the hurt of being ditched by his two closest friends.

Donald was a first class court mage, and despite appearances Goofy made a fine Captain of the Guard, but neither were all that used to dealing with teenagers. If she knew them, they'd probably honestly thought Sora would rather talk to Leon and not even considered what not giving Sora the choice would look like to him. They still had moments where they forgot Sora was a kid swirling with hormones – a lot of which had banked up during his year asleep. Aerith briefly wondered whether Sora's dropped voice was one of the things he'd talked to Leon about during previous visits, but shook the thought away.

"Speak to Leon about what?" said the man himself. He loomed in the doorway and both Sora and Aerith jumped.

"Goodness, Leon, don't creep up on people like that!" Aerith scolded, bending to pick up the dropped match. "I don't want to survive the Heartless for you to kill me with a heart attack."

Leon just grunted and came further into the kitchen. "Speak to me abut what?" he asked Sora again.

"Oh, um, I just…" Sora said helplessly. "I wanted to talk to you about, um … things …"

"Like?" Leon prompted, the barest hint of an edge to his voice. He was kinder than he used to be, but he still didn't suffer foolishness well. It was testament to Yuffie's agility that she'd stayed alive so long despite her tricks.

_He just wanted company_, Aerith thought, even as she realised such an answer would not sit well with Leon. He didn't talk about his past or his world, but she knew Leon grew up before he was ready and still resonated with early lessons of self-sufficiency, not admitting weaknesses and not depending on others. Never mind that he could've walked away when they first met in Traverse Town. He wasn't part of Aerith and Yuffie's world, didn't know them from the next refugee. He owed them no allegiance and could've struck out on his own, but had stuck by the two girls and defended them when the time came. Sora was a tough kid, but being Keyblade Master had to be lonely sometimes. Leon understood about needing company even if he didn't – _couldn't_ – admit it.

"Like how to get a fire going with one match and no matchbox," Aerith interrupted, placing herself in front of Sora and waggling the match in Leon's face. He drew back his neck and blinked as though she was talking in riddles, then rolled his eyes and advanced on the hearth.

Sora shot Aerith a grateful look.

Leon found a piece of flint in one of his many, many pockets. A few heavy strokes against the edge of his gunblade produced enough sparks to light the screwed up paper already in the fireplace. Then he got down on his hands and knees to blow the embers into proper flames. Seeing him crouched on the floor, cheeks rounded like a hamster, almost made Aerith laugh, but she didn't want to offend him when he was helping. Within minutes a fire crackled in the grate and she clapped her hands with glee.

Leon grunted. "This isn't the proper use for a weapon," he muttered, holstering his gunblade.

"Nonsense. This is a perfectly good use for it. There's no point in having it shiny and polished if your belly's empty and you're too weak to fight." She pointed. "Now make yourself useful and start chopping onions. You know I get all tearful when I do it. Put that stoicism to good use."

Leon grunted again, but did as she directed. He removed his gloves and washed his hands without being told, then sliced onions with military precision. Each cut was meticulous and evenly spaced; as though this onion and its fate were the most critical task he'd ever been charged with. Halfway through he stopped to examine the chopping knife.

"I'll sharpen this for you when I'm done. It's too blunt."

It seemed fine to Aerith, but everything that could be a weapon became one in Leon's head, so she let it pass. Instead she went to the sink to wash her own hands, calling over her shoulder, "Sora, bring me that ladle, would you? Oh, and the bread." She lifted a toasting fork from its hook and rubbed the tip onto her skirt to check for soot, realising belatedly what she was doing. Too late: a huge black stain marred the pink cotton, alongside half a dozen smears of soil and dust from the computer room floor. "And could you also pass me the apron from the back of the door?"

Sora scampered around the kitchen, fetching this, carrying that and doing whatever he was told. He bubbled with puppyish enthusiasm and Aerith wondered if he used to help his mother with the cooking back on his island.

Leon nodded when Sora put turnips and carrots in front of him to chop, though Aerith was almost disgusted to call the tiny, twisted things real turnips and carrots. When things changed (and they would change, someday, you see if they didn't) she would have a proper garden again, and she'd grow flowers and vegetables that would make these poor offerings crawl back into the ground to finish what they'd started.

Gradually, cooking smells spread through the room and Aerith's stomach growled to match Sora's. Sora joined Leon in chopping up whatever she instructed, bringing her chunks of potato, parsnip and leek, plus ground pepper and a bay leaf that was going brown at the edges. Aerith tore off that part and added everything to the mix. When she was satisfied she left the pot to simmer uncovered and began driving slices of bread onto the toasting fork, leaving just enough space between each for the flames to lick. In what seemed like no time at all they went from nothing to a full meal that, even if she did say so herself, smelled pretty good.

"What do you call that stuff?" Sora asked, staring into the pot with undisguised longing.

Aerith shrugged. "Vegetable Hotpot, I guess." She hadn't touched meat since their world vanished. She'd tried, but too many memories arose of seeing people torn apart by Heartless and Dusks – sometimes figuratively, their hearts released from their chests without cutting them open first, but sometimes literally; when Leon roughly gripped her head and turned it into his chest where she couldn't see. Aerith found she couldn't willingly put something into her mouth that might've screamed as it died. "Would you fetch the plates? No, wait, you won't be able to reach the top cupboard. Leon?"

Wordlessly, Leon set the sturdy table with many more than three plates. He knew the way this went as much as Aerith did.

Sure enough, minutes later a familiar head poked around the doorframe, followed by another.

"Yummy!" Yuffie exclaimed. "Something smells _good_! Room for a couple more?"

Aerith gestured with her head, busy making sure the toast didn't burn. Sora waited beside her with a toast rack. When it was filled he took it to the table where Yuffie banged a knife and fork in her fists. Leon rolled his eyes and swiped at her head as he went past, but she ducked, stuck out her tongue and flicked her fork at him. He snatched it from the air with an ease that bespoke the many times they'd performed similar routines, slotted it back into her hand and took up his own seat on the opposite side of the table.

Tifa hesitated in the doorway, glancing between them and the corridor.

Aerith ladled hotpot into the two bowls Sora held ready, but then took them away to place on a tray with cutlery and the refilled canteen Leon had brought in with him. She didn't for one second consider he'd left it on the side by accident. Tifa looked grateful when Aerith pushed the tray into her hands.

"Go eat with him," Aerith said softly.

"Thank you." The gratitude in Tifa's voice was genuine and it tore a little at Aerith's heart to hear it. This was not what Tifa had thought she would find when she reunited with them. This was not what had kept her going when she'd thought all hope was lost. Still, she could no more stop trying to reach Cloud than she could cease breathing. None of them could. They'd lost too much already to lose each other now.

When Tifa was gone Aerith briskly served the rest of the Restoration Committee before taking her own seat. She was just reaching for a piece of toast when a plume of purplish smoke erupted not quite in the centre of the room. Its contents yelped when they landed too close to the hearth.

"Gawrsh, Donald, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bump ya into it like that."

Donald sat in the sink of dirty dishes that'd been left to soak, steam coming off his backside and a glare trained on Goofy that could melt iron filings. Aerith was suddenly glad of his lisp. Sora didn't need to learn bad words like that – though judging by the way Yuffie leaned close, and how Sora's eyes widened, she was translating every syllable. With relish.

"My goodness, fresh toast," Merlin said with far too much surprise to be genuine. "And some sort of piping hot stew, as well. It appears we're just in time, gentlemen. What a stroke of luck."

"Yeah right, you old coot," said Yuffie, frisbeeing a slice of toast at him.

Merlin pointed a finger and the toast halted in mid air for him to bite. He chewed thoughtfully, making approving noises like a wine connoisseur sniffing a fresh bottle, before announcing, "A masterstroke of culinary greatness, as always my dear Aerith. Is there any jam?"

"Hey!" Yuffie protested. "How do you know it wasn't me who slaved over a hot fire so you could fill your face?"

Merlin ignored her and sat down next to Aerith.

Yuffie grinned devilishly. She leaned across the table, tiny chest just skimming her food, and linked her fingers under her chin. "How's the girdle, old fart?"

Merlin turned tomato-red.

Leon arched an eyebrow. "_Girdle_?"

"Ask him," Yuffie sniggered, and somehow Aerith just _knew_ this had something to do with her coming home pink.

Donald and Goofy placed themselves either side of Sora, as always, which in Donald's case meant shoving a chair in between the Keyblade Master and Yuffie. Donald treated Yuffie to a suspicious look, which she returned sweetly, as though she was a normal sixteen year old girl and not a ninja who knew fifteen different ways to kill someone using just one hand.

"What's a girdle?" Sora asked, nonplussed at the amused look that sprinted around the table.

"Aw, he's so adorable," Yuffie squealed, leaning right over Donald and squashing him so she could pinch Sora's cheek. "Are you sure you're just two years younger than me? I feel like such a mature woman compared to you. Which is great, because I was sick of being the innocent little baby of the bunch."

Leon's eyebrow hitched further, but he said nothing as he bent his head to eat.

"I heard that, Squall."

"It's Leon, and I didn't say a word."

"I know, but I heard what you were thinking, and you can just fu-"

"Could I please have some toast?" Goofy butted in loudly. "Miss Yuffie, wouldja mind passin' the butter? Much obliged to ya, ma'am. Mm-mm, this here stew is scrumptious, Miss Aerith. You sure do got the magic touch when it comes to cookin'. Even the royal chefs back home don't got nuthin' so tasty as this. No siree."

Aerith smiled at Goofy's clumsy attempts at distraction. "You're welcome, Goofy, though I think you're giving me too much credit. Any time you boys fancy a proper meal, you just drop by and we'll feed you up a bit. We can't have our saviours going hungry."

"Yes, ma'am. I mean, no, ma'am. I mean … Miss Yuffie, I don't think that's hygienic."

Yuffie looked up from stabbing bits of potato with a kunai. "I know," she said through her mouthful, "but m'knife's inna ceilin'."

Somewhat alarmingly that didn't surprise anyone. They didn't even look up to check.

All at once, Aerith was struck by the sheer domesticity of the scene. Once upon a time she'd thought she would never experience this kind of comfort again. Once upon a time she'd thought the best she could ever hope for was a head full of memories and a halfway house in Traverse Town that echoed with the footsteps of those who weren't there.

A sense of calm suffused her as she watched these people she'd come to call friends: Yuffie bolting her food and yelling at whoever would listen; Leon patiently chewing and swallowing; Sora sometimes missing his mouth because he was too busy watching everyone else; Merlin ignoring everybody with the studiousness of a scholar. She felt the murmur of camaraderie wash around her like an incoming tide. True, they weren't exactly what you'd call normal, and true, not everybody could claim to have a wizard, a ninja and anthropomorphic animals at the same table, but just sitting down, sharing a meal and making smalltalk after all that had happened to them … it was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

"Gawrsh, are you all right, Miss Aerith?" Goofy stared at her with distress.

Aerith rubbed discreetly at her eyes, not fooling anyone. "Yeah, I'm fine. Anyone want seconds?"

Leon gave her and her full plate a calculated blank look before rising and going to the pot with both his and Merlin's plates. He returned for the others', making sure each held an equal amount.

"Look who's playing daddy," Yuffie grinned. "Gonna tuck me into bed and read me a story later, Squall?"

"Leon," he automatically corrected. "There's enough left for Cid when he gets back."

Cid hated travelling by magic, and would rather eat his own face off than get home by one of Merlin's spells. Cid liked tangible things – things he could touch he could understand, could take apart to see what made them tick and put them back together again, only better. The more arcane parts of this new world made him suspicious, even more than they had back home. It was a wonder that he spent so much time over at Merlin's. More than once Aerith had speculated as to what the two men talked about that could overcome the natural hostility between science and magic. Yuffie had tried to spy on them a couple of times, partly out of curiosity, but mostly to tick them off. Generally she came home smelling of moat water and muttering about 'old farts'.

"That's good," Aerith nodded, glad she wasn't the only one thinking of absent friends.

Leon paused in the act of sitting down. "Aerith, I meant to ask you something."

Yuffie paused in snatching the last slice of toast from Donald's plate. "Ooh, sounds juicy. Hey, give that back!"

Donald defiantly shoved the toast into his beak, then choked, eyes widening, and reached for a glass of water. Both Sora and Goofy thrust theirs at him, with the result that most went in his lap but enough reached the bread to soften and slide it down his gullet. Donald sighed loudly, thumping a fist against his chest.

"And that's why you should always chew your food," Yuffie admonished. "Can you chew with a beak, though? Hm, I never thought about that before. You don't peck your food, do you, bird-brain? I'm gonna watch you finish your hotpot now so I can see how you do it."

"It's rude to stare," Donald said primly, spooning up food with the air of one who wouldn't usually mind being the centre of attention, but could really do without it right now, thank you very much.

Fortunately for him, Leon went on. "Aerith, the computer room."

"Yes?"

"Is it _really_ necessary for you to do your potting in there? There are other rooms that would be more suitable for plants."

Plants were, by definition, life. Without plants everything would wither and die. Back home people had only just begun to realise this before the end: that sucking the life-force out of the planet to power light bulbs was killing off the planet's ability to grow things, and without plants everyone who saw by the light of those bulbs would eventually sicken and die. Distant country villages without mako reactors had families with six, seven and eight children, all of them healthy. In Midgar couples were lucky to conceive one, and that one often died of something like mako-poisoning before they could walk. Her garden was the only place under the Plate that could grow flowers and she never failed to sell every single one in her basket – even the broken ones. Plants were hope. They were light in the darkness. They were the promise that things would someday heal.

Nobody had ever asked Aerith _why_ she wanted to grow her own garden in the middle of a war-zone.

Aerith thought about Leon bent over the computer console. She remembered coming down in the wee hours of the morning to find him slumped over the controls, fingers still twitching at a dream-keyboard. She recalled the flash of anguish in his eyes the one time she shook him awake and he mumbled "Rinoa?" at her before he realised who she was. After that she just covered him with a blanket and left him to dream. He always seemed frailer when he was asleep, though looking at him now 'frail' seemed an absurd word.

"Actually, I don't think there are," she replied.

Leon sighed. He levelled a looked at her that was part exasperated, part weary resignation, and part pure Leon – all dependability and repression and gruff, faltering tenderness.

"You could always put your pots in my room," Yuffie suggested. "But you'd have to grow some Venus flytraps for me. Or one of those flesh-eating plants with the teeth and the long tongue. Yeah, that'd be cool." Her eyes clouded over with daydreams of ferocious vegetation. "Hey, old fart, do you have any seeds for plants like that?"

"My name is not 'old fart'," Merlin responded. "And I would not trust you with such things even if they were to exist."

"Spoilsport. I'll bet they _do_ exist. I'll bet they exist, and they're really cool, and you have some but you're just not telling us because you're an old fart who wants to keep all the fun for himself."

"Young lady, I'm growing quite tired of your insufferable-"

"Girdle," Yuffie smirked, reducing him to silence.

Aerith watched them bicker. Sora leaned to whisper to Goofy, who shrugged, and they both turned to Donald, who turned red and mumbled while shaking his head. Sora looked around the table and his eyes landed on Aerith. They spent a few moments staring at each other before he broke off to watch Yuffie who, growing bored with her conversation, had decided that now was a good time to balance on the back of her chair with a sai on her nose.

"Yuffie, get _down_," Leon barked.

"Why? I'm not hurting anyone."

"Y'might hurt _yerself_, Miss Yuffie," Goofy interjected.

"Pfft. I was pulling worse stunts when I was still in diapers. Watch this." She snapped her head back and threw herself into a somersault off her chair. The sai shot into an arc that ratcheted off a cast iron frying pan on the wall, bounced back towards the table point-first and had almost hit Donald in the back of his head when she seized it from the air. Yuffie twirled the deadly weapon like a baton between her feet, balanced in a perfect handstand. "Ta-dah!"

Donald looked like he was ready to faint.

"Wow. That was so cool," Sora breathed.

Donald looked up at him, hurt.

"Sorry, Donald, but it was. Could you teach me how to do that, Yuffie?"

She laughed and flipped back her feet. "Sure, short stuff. I'll teach you a whole bunch of tricks." She leered at him in a way that made Aerith resolve to have a word with Sora about the other part of being a teenager.

"Oh great," Leon deadpanned. "So there'll be two of them."

Merlin sipped at a cup of tea nobody had made for him "The world trembles."

Aerith thought about the seedlings all ready to be potted, the wealth of colour they promised and the hard work involved in making something grow in a place as inhospitable as Hollow Bastion. She thought about how far this ragtag band of survivors had come since running aground in Traverse Town, how they'd found niches in and around each other, and how far they still had to go to heal themselves. Gardening was all about hard work. Nobody ever made a great garden by sitting in the shade and saying, "Isn't it all so beautiful?"

All things considered, Aerith's garden was turning out quite nice.

_**

* * *

**_

Fin.

**

* * *

**

**A/N – Is it a _very_ bad thing that when I reread this I got a couple of Cid/Merlin vibes?**


End file.
